The bosonization procedure works equally well for fermions with spin, thus providing us with an essentially nonperturbative approach to one-dimensional metals. The foundations of this approach were laid in the late 1970s and early 1980s by various authors (see the review article by Brazovsky and Kirova (1984) and references therein). The bosonization approach is based on the fact that coherent excitations in onedimensional interacting systems are not renormalized electrons, but collective excitations – bosons. For spinless fermions there is only one branch of collective excitations – charge density waves. For fermions with spin, another branch appears which represents spin density waves. Elementary excitations in the charge sector carry charge ± e and spin 0; excitations in the spin sector are neutral and carry spin 1/2. Since the different branches have different symmetry properties, one can expect them to have quite different spectra. This can even go to such extremes that one branch has a gap and the other does not. It is only natural under such circumstances that electrons, which carry quantum numbers from both the spin and charge sectors, cannot propagate coherently. Roughly speaking, the parts of the electron containing different degrees try to tear it in pieces; it is customary to call this phenomenon spin-charge separation . Empirically this loss of coherence is revealed as an absence of a quasi-particle pole in the single-electron Green's function, an effect whose existence is supported by experimental observations (see discussion at the end of the chapter). All phenomenona described above (the spin-charge separation and existence of excitations with fractions of quantum numbers) can be described by the model considered below.
The bosonization procedure works equally well for fermions with spin, thus providing us with an essentially nonperturbative approach to one-dimensional metals. The foundations of this approach were laid in the late 1970s and early 1980s by various authors (see the review article by Brazovsky and Kirova (1984) and references therein). The bosonization approach is based on the fact that coherent excitations in onedimensional interacting systems are not renormalized electrons, but collective excitations – bosons. For spinless fermions there is only one branch of collective excitations – charge density waves. For fermions with spin, another branch appears which represents spin density waves. Elementary excitations in the charge sector carry charge ± e and spin 0; excitations in the spin sector are neutral and carry spin 1/2. Since the different branches have different symmetry properties, one can expect them to have quite different spectra. This can even go to such extremes that one branch has a gap and the other does not. It is only natural under such circumstances that electrons, which carry quantum numbers from both the spin and charge sectors, cannot propagate coherently. Roughly speaking, the parts of the electron containing different degrees try to tear it in pieces; it is customary to call this phenomenon spin-charge separation . Empirically this loss of coherence is revealed as an absence of a quasi-particle pole in the single-electron Green's function, an effect whose existence is supported by experimental observations (see discussion at the end of the chapter). All phenomenona described above (the spin-charge separation and existence of excitations with fractions of quantum numbers) can be described by the model considered below.
We reconsider the problem of separation of spin and charge in one-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets. We show that spin and charge separation in one-dimensional strongly correlated systems cannot be described by the slave-boson or fermion representation within any perturbative treatment of the interactions between the slave holons and slave spinons. The constraint of single occupancy must be implemented exactly. As a result the slave fermions and bosons are not part of the physical spectrum. Instead, the excitations that carry the separate spin and charge quantum numbers are solitons. To prove this result, it is sufficient to study the pure spinon sector in the slave-boson representation. We start with a short-range resonating-valence-bond state spin liquid mean-field theory for the frustrated antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chain. We derive an effective theory for the fluctuations of the Affleck-Marston and Anderson order parameters. We show how to recover the phase diagram as a function of the frustration by treating the fluctuations nonperturbatively.
Spin–charge separation is considered to be one of the key properties that distinguish low-dimensional electron systems from others. Three-dimensional correlated electron systems are described by the Fermi liquid theory. There, low-energy excitations (quasiparticles) are reminiscent of noninteracting electrons: They carry charges −e and spins 1/2. It is believed that for any one-dimensional correlated electron system, low-lying electron excitations carry either only spin and no charge, or only charge without spin. That is why recent experiments looked for such low-lying collective electron excitations, one of which carries only spin, and the other carries only charge. Here we show that despite the fact that for exactly solvable one-dimensional correlated electron models there exist excitations which carry only spin and only charge, in all these models with short-range interactions the low-energy physics is described by low-lying collective excitations, one of which carries both spin and charge.
A fermion-spin transformation is used to implement the charge-spin separation, and is developed to study the low-dimensional t-J model. In this approach, the charge and spin degrees of freedom of the physical electron are separated, and the charge degree of freedom is represented by a spinless fermion while the spin degree of freedom is representd by a hard-core boson. The on-site local constraint for single occupancy is satisfied even in the mean-field approximation and the sum rule for the physical electron is obeyed. This approach can be applied to both one and two-dimensional systems. In the one-dimensional case, the spinon as well as the physical electron behave like Luttinger liquids. We have obtained a gapless charge and spin excitation spectrum, a good ground state energy, and a reasonable electron-momentum distribution within the mean-field approximation. The correct exponents of the correlation functions and momentum distribution are also obtained if the squeezing effect and rearrangement of the spin configurations are taken into account. In the two-dimensional case, within the mean-field approximation the magnetized flux state with a gap in the spinon spectrum has the lowest energy at half filling. The antiferromagnetic long-range order is destroyed by hole doping of the order \ensuremath{\sim}10-15 % for t/J=3-5 and a disordered flux state with gapless spinon spectrum becomes stable. The calculated specific heat is roughly consistent with observed results on copper oxide superconductors. The possible phase separation is also discussed at the mean-field level.
The properties of fermions in one dimension are markedly different from those in higher dimensions. In two or three dimensions, the many-body behaviour of fermions is described by the Fermi liquid model, whose most prominent result is that, instead of studying the behaviour of individual particles, it is better to describe the emergent phenomena of the whole system, known as quasiparticles. These are collective modes of excitations born out of particle-particle interactions, which resemble the constituent single particles, albeit with renormalised mass. In one dimension, however, the formation of such a correlated state is unfavourable and the quasiparticles are completely absent. Instead, 1D fermions are described by a model known as the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. Central to this model is the process of bosonisation, a mathematical technique which maps the excitation of fermions to bosonic modes of spin-density and charge-density waves. As a prerequisite of the bosonisation technique, the fermionic single-particle dispersion is approximated as a linear function. Consequently, the Luttinger liquid model is limited in its scope of applicability. Specifically, it is valid only in the vicinity of the Fermi points, where the excitation energy is low. Recent advancement in the theoretical field has expanded our understanding of 1D interacting fermions beyond the limit of linearity. The mobile-impurity model, proposed by L. Glazman and his co-authors, is a generalised model of 1D fermions which extends the scope of applicability of the Tomanaga-Luttinger model, accounting for the curvature of single-particle dispersion relations. It extends the region of validity of the tradition TLL theory from the neighbourhood of the Fermi points to a band which follows the single-particle dispersion. This thesis presents the results of an experimental work which provides direct evidence of non-linear behaviour predicted by the new model. It revolves around the measurement of the spectral function of electrons in surface-gate-defined quantum wires on a double-quantum-well, GaAs/AlGaAs device, and the comparison and fitting of the result to the non-linear theory. The spectral function is a theoretical concept frequently used in discussions on many-body problems. Its physical interpretation makes it closely related to experimental observables, such as the tunnelling current between the double quantum wells in this work. This thesis consists of three parts. Part one concerns the theories of the various many-body models and the experimental technique: Chapter 1 briefly introduces the concept of Fermi liquid, before focusing on a detailed account of the Luttinger-liquid model. The mobile-impurity model will be introduced in the framework of the Luttinger liquid model afterwards, followed by a review of experimental works reported in the literature on the study of TLL physics. In Chapter 2, the principles of the experimental tunnelling spectroscopy technique are described. The second part of the thesis details the structure of the test device used in the experiment and its fabrication. In particular, we will discuss the intricacies of the three-dimensional EBL fabrication process developed specifically for this project. The setup and running of the measurement circuit will also be discussed in this part of the thesis, in the context of a prerequisite sample characterisation measurement. In the final part of the work, data from the main experiment will be presented and analysed, in search for the electron-electron interaction effects which are predicted by the theoretical discussions in the first chapter.
We discuss a new method to perform numerical simulations of one-dimensional systems with fermion and boson degrees of freedom. The method is based on a direct-space, imaginary-time representation of the fermion field. It is fast so that systems having up to 100 sites can easily be simulated. In addition, the method provides an intuitive physical "picture" of the ground state of a one-dimensional many-body system. We discuss in detail how to implement the method and how to compute various physical quantities. In particular, we show how to extend the method to study averages of off-diagonal quantities in an occupation-number representation. To assess the accuracy of our procedure, we apply it to free fermions in one dimension and compare with exact results. We then study a model of spinless interacting fermions and obtain the expected phase structure and behavior of correlation functions. We also consider the extended Hubbard model at various points in its phase diagram and study the behavior of spin-density, charge-density, and pairing correlation functions. We then study the Gross-Neveu model and show how the behavior depends on the number of fermion flavors. Finally, we consider an electron-phonon model and study its behavior both in the one-particle polaron sector and in the half-filled-band case. Along the way we show pictures of the ground-state configurations that give physical insight into the properties of the systems, like charge-density-wave, spin-density-wave, and superconducting states, "fractional charges," and solitons. We conclude by comparing our method with other methods and discuss the possibility of extending it to higher dimensions.
Abstract. I give a brief introduction to Luttinger liquids. Luttinger liquids are paramagnetic one-dimensional metals without Landau quasi-particle excitations. The elementary excitations are collective charge and spin modes, leading to charge-spin separation. Correlation functions exhibit power-law behavior. All physical properties can be calculated, e.g. by bosonization, and depend on three parameters only: the renormalized coupling constant Kρ, and the charge and spin velocities. I also discuss the stability of Luttinger liquids with respect to temperature, interchain coupling, lattice effects and phonons, and list important open problems. WHAT IS A LUTTINGER LIQUID ANYWAY? Ordinary, three-dimensional metals are described by Fermi liquid theory. Fermi liquid theory is about the importance of electron-electron interactions in metals. It states that there is a 1:1-correspondence between the low-energy excitations of a free Fermi gas, and those of an interacting electron liquid which are termed “quasiparticles” [1]. Roughly speaking, the combination of the Pauli principle with low excitation energy (e.g. T ≪ EF) and the large phase space available in 3D, produces